newbie needs a little help... trying to write an ftp script.

[google account]

Diez wrote:
> Googleboy wrote:
> > import ftplib
> > 
> > ftp = ftplib.FTP('172.30.30.30')  # This is wrong,  somehow...?
> > ftp.login(user,pass)
> > ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # I believe it might need to be
> > ftp.retrlines('ls -al')
> > ftp.sendcmd('prompt')
> > ftp.cwd('folder')
> > ftp.retrbinary(retr *tgz)
> > ftp.quit()

> Your example worked fine with me for "ftp.suse.com" - at least the first 3
> lines. It didn't understand ls -al and prompt, and a folder "folder" didn't
> exist of course.

A bit of further reading pointed out to me that sendcmd is limited to
rfc959 commands only,  it doens't interpret commands you can type into
an ftp session as I first assumed.  So things like "prompt' (which
turns interactive mode off in ftp clients) won't work.

This introduces extra complexity to my task - I am trying to log into
an ftp site and do a "mget *tgz" and have it download all files ending
in tgz.  I don't think this is a simple thing to accomplish anymore.
 
> The ftp.retrbinary(retr *tgz) is also flawed - what is retr, a variable? I
> think you need to look up that command again. And *tgz can't be right, too.
> You most probably want "*tgz" there (a string literal)

I think I wanted the whole thing to be a string literal.  I have done
a bit more poking and prodding and found that

ftp.retrlines('RETR file')

will work,  so long as file is a text document,  so it can spit the
output to standard out.

retrlines/retrbinary has this thing called a callback.  I am expecting
that is something that allows the script to write the file.  I also
imagine that it will only allow me to have one open callback at a
time.  This further complicates achieving my objectives.

I think I am going to have to figure out some sort of a for loop based
on the output of a list command.

thanks for the help diez.

googleboy.